The Lamb Dynasty
by gallyg
Summary: After her escape plan breaks down, Eleanor Lamb is subjected to the Utopian program that drove Dr. Alexander mad. Previous formatting issues have been fixed.


"What's this?"

We froze. Father and I, together through the eyes of a Little Sister, staring at my mother, our hand on the lever to open the door out of her office. For a brief moment, it occurred to me to tell Father to run away. Too late, however. Mother was on us in a second, firmly grasping the Little Sister's arm.

"What is a gatherer doing in my office? Where's your protector, little girl?" Mother's eyes narrowed, and our blood ran cold. Father's panic fed mine, in turn feeding the panic of what little remaining self-awareness the girl had. Something snapped. The body was flailing around, practically convulsing with effort, trying to get escape Mother's hold on her. I couldn't stop watching, feeling what she felt—the bonds that connected me to the Little Sisters was not selective—but I turned my attention away from the scene.

_Stay calm, Father. Focus. We need to think._ It did little good. I could hear Mother calling someone to her office. A splicer came in, a young man with somewhat less-severe-than-average deformities. I could actually see both of his eyes when he was told to take care of the girl while Mother investigated something.

"T-take care of you, eh? What does that mean?" The splicer was grinning at the Little Sister. "Not my f-fault the orders weren't clear, right? Dr. Lamb c-c-can't get mad at me, r-right?" His eyes darted around, and I knew what was about to happen. And it wasn't going to be pretty. Only a moment later, Father figured it out, too.

_Father! You need to relax yourself! You can probably pull away from this. Just focus on your own body and—_

"Aaaghh!" The scream escaped my lungs before I knew it. I could feel my skin being torn away. Fingers boring their way into my stomach. I doubled over, clenching at my torso to stop the pain. _No,_ I thought, _this isn't my pain._ Peaking through her eyes again, I saw only blurred vision, fading into a cloudy green. A hand emerged from inside her, holding a slug tightly. Something churned inside my actual stomach as the slug writhed and the girl's body went limp. Then, all at once, darkness and silence. A part of my mind hollowed out, and a coldness filled my brain.

The churning intensified. I fell off the side of my bed, collapsed onto my hands and knees, and I vomited. Heave. Heave. Vomit. Onto the floor. Father was calmer now. His consciousness stood beside my own, concerned. Heave. Heave. Choked it back. I had to focus. _Plans have obviously changed. That's okay, we knew this wouldn't be easy. We improvise, just like we've been doing this whole time._

I stood up. _There's got to be another way._ I looked outside my prison of a room, and saw Mother, staring at me. How much had she seen? Would she put together that I sent that Little Sister to be controlled by Father? Of course not. Nothing that specific. But she wasn't stupid. She pulled a small device out of a pocket in her jacket and mumbled something to herself. Her eyes found their way to the ground, and she turned away from me. She pressed a button on the device, and a red smoke filled the room I was in. The last thing I remember before passing out was Mother looking back over her shoulder at me, tears welling up in her eyes.

As if she was sorry. What a joke.

What felt like a long period of time passed by in a haze. I remember very little.

A tea party. I sat at one end of the table, Father sat at the other end. To my left was Amir and Mr. Diary. To my right, Aunt Gracie and Sinclair. Our table was in the middle of a grassy field, with some forestry surrounding us. In the distance, I could see a large structure. "It's the Wellington Monument, Eleanor," Amir said to me, with a smile. Such a handsome smile. "We're in Ireland! You read about this in that book I showed you, remember?"

I nodded back, smiling myself now. "We made it, didn't we?" The sun was shining bright and warm on my skin. I inhaled. The air was so fresh. Gracie put her hand on my shoulder, reassuring me.

"You made it, child."

"Y'all are free now, lass."

"It took a little longer than we thought, but now we know sunlight feels like, Eleanor."

"I know how much you wanted this, miss Eleanor."

"I'm so proud of you, darling."

My eyes were welling up. "I just..." I wiped away the tears. "Sorry. I just never really believed I'd get here. It seemed impossible. When I was a little girl, I almost didn't believe there was a surface. I thought, maybe this is it. No world outside of Rapture. There may as well not have been." I looked up and around at the faces surrounding me. "But here we are."

It was too good to be true.

Father raised his cup of tea and winked at me, his face beaming. "A toast to my daughter."

I woke up strapped to a gurney. The room I was in too dark to make out, the only light being the operating lamp blasting in my face. "She's awake," an unfamiliar voice said, even but urgent.

"Well increase the dosage. If she freaks out and we botch this, I don't want to think about what Lamb would do to us."

I tried opening my mouth to say something, but I was too weak to force out any words. Whatever drug they had me on, I could feel it pumping faster into my veins, and before I could try speaking again, I drifted away.

"Papa Suchong?" I cried out into the darkness. The other girls were nowhere to be found, and I didn't want to be alone, even in a place like this. "Papa Suchong?" No answer. I took a cautious step forward.

"What!? What do you want, you stupid brat?" I spun around and saw Papa Suchong scribbling away at his notebook, scrapped pages littering the desk and surrounding floor. "I'm very busy man! Why not bother someone else? Maybe that Big Daddy you refuse to bond with."

A younger man stood next to the desk, rolling his eyes at his disgruntled colleague. Dr. Alexander. "Really now, Yi? Must you be so brash? She's just a child."

"Child? Mr. Ryan is not paying me to deal with child! Even if he is, I doubt he cares much about daughter of Sofia Lamb." He waved dismissively, at me and at Dr. Alexander. I looked down.

"Perhaps you're right. How could anyone care about this one? Her own mother certainly doesn't. How did she end up here, anyway? I thought she was being looked after by Grace Holloway."

A third scientist entered the room. She spoke with a familiar German accent. "I don't think the how matters very much." She put her hand gently on my head and began stroking my hair. "What matters is that she is here. And we have a job to do." Suddenly, Tenenbaum's hands were around my throat, shoving me to the floor. She looked at me with devilish eyes filled with bloodlust. Suchong and Alexander held me down as Tenenbaum pulled out a scalpel. "Try to stay still."

I let out a scream, tears rolling down my eyes, but it didn't matter. Anyone who could hear me was part of the chain. They wanted this to happen. They wanted the scalpel to cut through my skin into my innards, revealing my stomach, held open with a custom retractor. They wanted the cocktail of oxidized ADAM and morphine to drip into my body, making me the ideal habitat for that disgusting sea slug. They wanted...

My eyes jolted open. The room was still dimly lit, but I could make out more details than the last time I awoke. I was in some sort of operating room. Persephone's medical wing? My head was pulsing. I tried to sit up, but just ended up pulling on some restraints with a thud. The movement also tugged at some tubes running into my veins from some machines.

"Shhh..." Mother. She put her hand gingerly on my forehead. I shook it off, making the pain in my head worse. "I know you're hurting right now, sweetie. We're working on that." She turned some dial on one of the machines. "Everything misfortune that has befallen you is because of Subject Delta. The Pair-Bond you share with him has had disastrous consequences. Mommy is going to take care of that."

I knew what she meant by that. "You mean to severe that bond? And then what, kill Father again? Are you going to make me watch this time, too?" Mother said nothing, just looked at me with her best impression of sympathy. "I'm not going to just let this happen, Mother. I'm going to kill you for this. And when I do, it's not going to be because you've turned into some Utopian wonder child. It's going to be for Father. And it's going to be for me."

Mother's eyes remained locked with mine. "It breaks my heart to hear you so upset. I promise, this will pass."

I wanted to respond, but I could feel the drugs taking their toll again. My eyes held steady with Mother's as long as I could keep them open, but as my breaths and my eyelids grew heavier, my mind wondered off to that place again...

"Mommy, why don't I have a Daddy?" I sat, slouching, at the dinner table, picking at the last bit of kale on my plate, no intention of actually eating it.

"Eleanor, don't slouch. And finish your dinner."

Despite myself, I fixed my posture. "Mommy..."

"Eleanor, I've already told you why. You are like a rare flower, grown with care by a single gardener. Your destiny is far greater than Daddy could understand." I continued picking at kale, clearly not satisfied with the answer. Mommy sighed. "Eleanor. I love you more than words can describe, and I only want what's best for you. This world is not ready for you, so I need to make sure you are going to be ready for it. I'm the only one who can, especially in Rapture."

"What do you mean?" She always seemed to talk about Rapture like it was bad, but it seemed fine to me, and the man on the radio said Rapture was the best place to live.

"Andrew Ryan is... a misguided man. Do you remember when we talked about being nice to people, even the dog-eaters?" I nodded. "Andrew Ryan doesn't think that's a good idea, and he has a lot of people who think like him down here."

"The other kids are nice. I know you don't like them, but they really are. Even Amir-"

"Eleanor, it's not just about being nice. Someday, you'll understand. Someday..." Mommy trailed off, and seemed to be lost in thought. She eventually got like this every time I tried to ask questions about my Daddy.

I erupted into consciousness. A burning of indescribable intensity raged inside my head like a radioactive bomb. I tore through my restraints and began clawing at my face futilely. The pressure expanded against my skull, threatening to increase the boundaries of the pain beyond my body. Knowing what I'd find, I sought out Father. Nothing. The Pair-Bond was empty, and in its place was molten suffering. I thrashed left and right, pulling out needles and tubes from my body. I fell out of the bed and tried stumbling to my feet. Impossible. Blood leaked out of my nose. I let out a scream. To my ears, it barely sounded human.

I looked around the room. Same as before, though now everything was shoved up against a wall. In fact, among the equipment, I saw two men. They were both collapsed into unnatural-looking positions. Possibly dead, though they looked fresher than most corpses in Rapture. Did I do that? How did I break those restraints? I scanned the room for something small and blunt. A broken wheel from one of the gurneys. I pointed my hand toward it and concentrated. It rushed toward me, stopping centimeters in front on my palm. "Telekinesis," I whispered. I let the wheel fall. Looking back at the men, I noticed they had lab coats on and seemed remarkably unspliced. They had treated me with plasmids.

The pain in my head had spread to my entire body and dulled somewhat. Carefully, I stood up straight and headed for the exit, each step its own event. The door flew open before I reached it. Mother stood in the frame. "So, Eleanor. Here we are, at Rapture's final precipice. This is the moment of truth."

"I..." My mind struggled to come up with the words. I wanted her to... Or rather, I wanted to...

I knew what I wanted, in a nebulous way. I'd promised her I'd do what I wanted to do right now. Death. Revenge. These words still existed in my mind, and I knew what they meant, but I couldn't connect them to Mother in a tangible way. The concept seemed ridiculous somehow. It would make me happy, but her suffering would far outweigh that happiness, and how would Rapture function if she was gone?

"You didn't hurt these men on purpose, did you?" I shook my head. "Perfect. You understand what's happened, don't you?" I nodded. Mother made better on her promises than I could.

The Utopian Program. It had driven Dr. Alexander mad, but Mother had suspected that I could undergo the procedure without any serious drawbacks for a long time now. Based on the WYK experiment, the point of the program was to make the common good into an emotional concept. I couldn't touch Mother. I couldn't touch anyone unless it promoted Rapture's overall well-being. Dr. Alexander tried to kill my Father, and caused many to die in the process, but it would have been worth it if he'd succeeded, since it would mean I'd be able to fulfill my destiny. Not that it ended up mattering.

There was a second part, however. Something Dr. Alexander couldn't have been part of. Mother had access to a lot of ADAM from a lot of very important people in Rapture's history. Artists. Engineers. Economists. Everything. Years ago, I underwent the treatment necessary to read the memories from that ADAM. I searched my brain for information I should not know. Equations. Painting techniques. Musical numbers. So much to sort through. None of it anything I should know.

Mother's dark smirk showed me that she knew the score. "Good. Come, Eleanor. We have a lot of work to do. Are you familiar with a place called Minerva's Den?"

**To be continued...**


End file.
